Next Media Animation, a Taiwan-based company, is getting a lot of attention lately for its humorous parodies. WebProNews spoke with Emily Wu, production manager with the company, about some of their recent productions involving Steve Jobs and Michael Arrington.
As she explained, the company’s team of journalists looks at the top headlines of the day, creates a script, and from there takes it to their team of animators. Since there is really no limit to the type of content they produce, they have animations covering multiple industries including tech, entertainment, sports, and politics.
Many of the animations are humorous, but the company also creates hard news productions. Wu told us Next Media Animation believes that their animations help consumers better understand what is happening in the news.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Sep 22nd, 2011. 
It’s all over the news; the end of Facebook is near!
Is Facebook headed the way of the Dodo like MySpace, Friendster, etc? No, at least not anytime soon. It is still very much a social media powerhouse. But Facebook is not invincible and it certainly cannot sustain perpetual growth.
According to an article in Business2Community.com, Facebook has lost 6 million users in the U.S. Growth among users in other countries is on the rise but stateside Facebook may be losing some of its luster.
Another recent article in MediaPost points to a possible saturation point for Facebook in the U.S. Facebook is now needs to rapidly monetize its current user base, the article also points out. So, look for more aggressive marketing efforts from Facebook most likely at the expense of user privacy.
So, could this spell trouble for the Social Media Juggernaut? Sure, in some ways it does. But the real lesson here is one we’ve seen before. Clinging to trends as a marketing solution is not a solid strategy. Taking advantage of trends and using them based on solid market research and planning makes more sense.
Social Media is not and will never be the one solution for all of your marketing woes. Social Media platforms are in constant competition with each other for your business’s ad dollars. They are constantly trying to outdo one another. Just take a look at Google’s latest attempt at Social Media, Google+ in this article from Search Engine Journal.
No one social media offering or new technology product is going to magically solve all of your marketing problems. Social Media isn’t going to make marketing and engagement a “snap”, it takes work. These things are tools that are to be added to your marketing toolkit.
It’s important that you have some control over your message and your marketing efforts. It is good to diversify your efforts making use of all the appropriate resources at your disposal. But ultimately you should be driving them to a property that is uniquely yours, like a web site or mobile page/app. This is where conversion happens.
In another article from BusinesstoCommunity.com they reference the “Commit to Quit” day back in May where numbers of users committed to cancel their Facebook accounts in protest of the ongoing privacy issues Facebook is having. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Don’t get too caught up in hype. Stay smart and market using common sense. What works is knowing your audience, marketing to them where they are, and driving them to a place where you can convert them to a customer.
Do you market with Facebook? What do you think about their decline in the US?
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 1st, 2011.
The statistics speak for themselves. Tumblr now has more blogs than WordPress. Tumblr combines social networking with blogging. RSS is still baked in, disguising subscriptions as “follows”. Steve Rubel just wrote an interesting article, tackling the future and evolution of Tumblr as a platform.
All the forces are in place, to me at least, to propel Tumblr as the next big hub. However, it’s not blogging that will do it but – like Twitter and Facebook before it – the community that’s driving the network effect and its meteoric growth.
-Rubel
Agree. Tumblr’s taken out the middle man. People get scared by RSS feeds, they see scary technology that’s chaining them for life to a blog’s subscription. Not a problem here. Larger media outlets are also increasingly using Tumblr, a driving factor in its growth. The secret ingredient to any successful social media platform is community, and when your community is so easy to access and interact with, the lazy gen-x-ers and gen-y-ers/millenial-ers will flock.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 27th, 2011.
Geo-fencing is a new term that is starting to be used frequently in mobile marketing circles. Wikipedia describes it as, “a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area.” When this idea is integrated into mobile phones, it doesn’t take long to understand why geo-fencing is becoming a buzz term for mobile marketing.
In a nutshell, it allows users to receive automatic alerts pertaining to a specific area. Placecast is one company that is embracing this technology and using it to benefit both consumers and businesses. According to Alistair Goodman, the CEO of Placecast, the location-based mobile marketing service provides a solution for telephone manufacturers, local directory companies, and subscribers.
The solution is called ShopAlerts and uses geo-fencing technology to send users media messages. Goodman pointed out that it not only gives users the ability to discover what is happening around them, but it also gives businesses an opportunity to scale this activity.
“The key is that it’s tailored to where they are and when they’re there and any other preference data that they’ve set up,” he said.
When Placecast began to integrate place and time into mobile, it actually made attempts at check-in services and apps. However, Goodman said it quickly found that these types of services drain batteries. As a result, it, instead, developed its platform off the phone and made it scalable for businesses.
Geo-fencing creates multiple opportunities for businesses to connect with consumers in real-time. Placecast works with businesses directly to help them put up geo-fences around their physical locations.
Placecast recently signed a deal with AT&T that allows AT&T customers to personalize their interests and receive alerts pertaining to those preferences on their phone. These alerts could be anything from a discounted offer to information about a nearby event.
“It’s the first time a US carrier has deployed a location-based offering for their subscribers at scale,” said Goodman.
Placecast has a similar deal with the UK-based carrier O2. Goodman said that the company would continue to expand its services across the world with more partnerships. He also pointed out that Placecast was “moving aggressively” in the deals space.
Expert Articles – WebProNews
Internet Marketing Tools For The DIY’er HERE
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Mar 30th, 2011.
Demand Media’s much-anticipated initial public offering is coming next week, according to Kara Swisher, reporting for the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital. She says numerous sources "with knowledge of the situation" say it will happen after the company’s road show for investors.
Obviously Demand Media’s bread and butter is content, which the company has gotten down to an algorithmic science. The company’s content (created mainly through its Demand Studios arm) has been a subject of controversy for some time, but they’ve insisted that they’ve dedicated themselves to improving quality. At SXSW last year, I listened to CEO Richard Rosenblatt talk about this, and later I spoke with eHow GM Gregory Boudewijn and Demand Studios GM Stewart Marlborough, about the company’s new approach to content. Read that here.
Content properties include eHow, Cracked, LiveStrong, AnswerBag, GolfLink, and Trails.com. They get readers.
Since then, Demand has also launched the Talent & Expert Network and the Demand Media Blog Network. Suffice it to say, Demand Media is a content machine, and that tends to be good for advertising.
Content is only part of Demand Media’s strategy, however. The company offers products like the CoveritLive realtime conversation tool for live events, and Pluck, it’s social media technology platform, which is used by major brands like Best Buy, Kraft Foods, the NFL, and others (Pluck introduced a new trust filter system this week). Demand also offers domain registration and monetization services.
Last week, MarketWatch reported that the company would be offering 4.5 million shares priced between $ 14 and $ 16 a share, potentially raising nearly $ 140 million. The IPO will reportedly be led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Filed under Internet Technology by on Jan 21st, 2011.
